The Execution
by TakisAngel
Summary: Munkhbat (Mongolia) is sentenced to death for the horrible crime of murdering the beloved Emperor Yao. The day he is to be killed, Munkhbat ponders the absurdity of being executed for the one crime he didn't commit. Assassin AU, oneshot, TibMongol.


It was ironic, Munkhbat decided, staring at his executioner and the crowds that cheered for his death, that he was going to be executed for the one murder he didn't commit. The Emperor was speaking to the mob outside of the execution ring, his short hair brushed to silk like perfection, his soft clothes shifting over the sand crusty with blood, hands gesturing with a passion that was completely fabricated. Munkhbat decided to listen to the lies Emperor Kiku was telling the audience, just for old times sake.

"This mongol comes into our home, our palace, our lives, and kills the firstborn of the Empire!" the newly crowned emperor roared, and the crowd howled back, feet stomping and becoming even more bloodthirsty. "This murderer takes a man loved so dearly by his empire, and for what?! For money?!"

The mongol could have rolled his eyes at the hypocrisy. Like the second born prince of the empire was one to talk about cheap motives.

"Today, we kill this murderer! Today, we kill the man that had plagued our people with death and destruction! Today, we kill the man who took our EMPEROR!" The mob screamed back like a wild animal, screaming for his blood, screaming for the blood of a man that killed 21 people.

At least, as far anyone would ever know, Munkhbat snickered. He covered his tracks well, so well that the assassin was almost certain that he would never get caught.

"Almost being the key word", he remarked dryly, and out loud, making his guards whip over to him and press their spears harder in his already bloody back, as if a simple word was enough for the fighter to teleport out of this execution arena and never be found again. The truth was that Munkhbat always knew, in the deepest, darkest, most hidden corners of his mind, that he would get caught. Really, the entire underground knew the Palace Guards would grab them eventually, they all knew they were on borrowed time when they signed their contract with the devil and let themselves be pulled down into the most terrifying pit of humanity. So Munkhbat knew, but he didn't know he would be snatched for something he actually didn't do. He gave a final glare to the beautifully dressed man before his guards shoved him onto the stage.

"Jeesh, I'm going, I'm going!" Munkhbat rolled his eyes and strutted onto the stage. Grinning, he met Emperor Kiku's eyes and decided this was the best time for a conversation, given that it was going to be its last and all.

"Tell me 'Emperor,' how does it feel to have a brother's blood on your hands? Heavy, isn't it? I'm curious, is it still the same even if you are not related by full blood?" The mongol tilted his head to the side in mock thought, grinning even wider when Kiku stuttered and stared at him with gritted teeth.

"I did not kill Yao."

"Oh save it for the choir," Munkhbat snapped, looking at the mob that was growing more and more impatient. "If not you, who else? Certainly not me. I hated Yao, sure, but I would never kill him. I could never even try! The man is, oops, WAS," Munkhbat corrected, "Guarded like he was worth his weight in gold. He had troops everywhere he went, poison testers, heck, he even had booby traps load all over the palace! Some say that might have been a bit paranoid, but Yao was a smart man. He knew there were people in high places that wanted him gone. And so he made sure he was always protected, never unguarded, never unsafe. I couldn't have killed him if I tried. Though I am flattered by your faith in my skill."

"What is the point of all this?" the Emperor hissed, face going white.

"The point in all this is that, with so many guards around, he sure was killed pretty personally huh? Poison and then strangulation? You have to be real close to pull off something like that. You'd have to sneak past his guards and get him alone then get him to EAT something and it's just a mess! Of course, it would be a lot easier if it was someone he trusted."

"Stop it. I command you to stop talking!" The Emperor grabbed his collar and gave him an excellent view of the royal majesty's fury filled brown eyes.

"You can't stop rumors, Kiku." Said man dropped him at the sound of his name and backed away, eyes wide. "You can kill the guards who might have witnessed it. You can praise all truth seekers until they are clay in your manipulating hands. You can even use me as a scapegoat. But here's the thing. You can never stop the rats from chattering, now matter WHAT you do," Munkhbat chuckled maniacally, pointing to the new murderer in front of him. "Once you murder one, you won't stop. It's like drugs, once you do it once, you can do it twice, thrice, even 42 times! So let me pass on a bit of advice." He leaned in close to the frozen man, who had become a white sheet. "Don't use rope. It makes to much of a mark." The mongol then strutted over to his execution block, smiling at the black hooded executioner and getting ready to die.

"My brother was unfit to be Emperor!" cried the second on line, the spare, the son of a lowly concubine.

"And you are?"

"SILENCE!" the man screamed, jolting their conversation from the stage and to the general audience, who were now jumping at their feet, excited that FINALLY there was going to be blood. Money was passed around and bets were made about how many chops it would take to get through the assassin's neck, if his head would roll down, etc.

One stood in the crowd, completely silent and not moving, eyes wide and hands making no effort to try and lob bets. Munkhbat's eyes managed to stray onto the monk, where they locked and grew soft for a fraction of a second, before going back to being diamonds.

It was rather ironic, he decided once more, that the one time he was to be executed, there was somebody who would actually miss him. He never expected that at his execution, a crying someone who would actually scream out when he was about to die. Most of his dreams of his execution followed many others in the underground of humanity, involving angry declarations and vows of coming back with a vengeance. He'd been thinking of what he would say ever since he first signed his first contract with the devil, though he failed to read the fine print stating he could never go back after his first murder. He looked back at the monk as the executioner put his head down on the block, never letting his eyes stray as the executioner got ready to swing. He took a deep breath, let it out, and waited for the ax to fall.

"WAIT!" someone in the audience cried, and the axe stopped centimeters away from his neck to stare at the man who had cried out. The audience turned their eyes towards the monk, desperation and fear jolting out of him as he ran to get closer to Munkhbat.

"This man is innocent! I can testify! He was with me on the night of the murder!" The mob gasped, whipping their heads to a stuttering Emperor, who looked as if he had just seen a ghost.

"What do you mean, innocent?" The Emperor finally regain his composure, glaring down at the protester, and the crowd soon followed. "This man has been accused of twenty one murders and convicted of seven!" Munkhbat chuckled to himself at that one. He still didn't know how he pulled that off.

"Sure he is a criminal, but he is also a human being! Should he not get a trial? Should he not be executed for a murder we know he has done?!" The monk grew louder, commanding the attention of the bloodthirsty being of people, and muttering could be heard among the thousands of heads it boasted. "He has not even been found guilty of a crime! Should not, we, the people of the Empire, decide who killed our Emperor?" Now the heads were nodding, turning its thousand eyes towards the Emperor, waiting for an answer.

"SILENCE!" Emperor Kiku ordered, and the world obeyed, the thousand headed creature shutting its mouth and the trees stopping their whispers. The wind slowed, as if the air itself was waiting for an answer. "This is man has been found guilty by the High Court for treason, murder, torture, and a list of things not fit for public ears. ALL people deserve a trial," the Emperor shouted, before turning to point at the assassin behind him, "But this one DOES NOT!"

The man went on to speak of his crimes, his murders, his targets, and had their family members stand onto the stage to testify. It was not fair, nor was it justice, but to the writhing being of anger and judgment below them, it didn't matter. One of the victims they pulled onto the stage as time crept by and Munkhbat's neck started to cramp, was a six year old girl, hand held by a shivering mother, seething at the assassin with hate as she told her story. Munkhbat remembered that one. The victim's wife had been pregnant. Oh, and that one! That was the son of the lord who drank his arsenic. This one was the second cousin of a drug lord, those ones were the younger sisters of the concubine, and on and on. The parade of victims marched forward, and the Emperor grinned at his position above the monk. It wasn't justice, it wasn't a trial, but it didn't matter. He had lost the court of public opinion.

"Does anybody think this man should get a TRIAL after all that he had done?!" the Emperor roared, pointing at the guilty man on the stage, and the crowd roared back, teeth clashing in anger, ready for justice. Emperor Yao was a beloved figure, if a bit heavy with the beating stick. Should not the murderer face justice? And even if he didn't do it, he still deserved to die. So chop off his head, the judges decided, and let the gods sort it out!

The executioner raised his axe once more, before another cry from the monk stopped him dead in his tracks once more.

"WAIT!"

"WHAT IS IT NOW?!" The emperor was getting twitchy, so close to killing Munkhbat that he could reach out and taste it, but this monk kept getting in the way. He had brought out the victims, he had gotten the verdict of the crowd, what more could this monk do?!

"I am a holy man. Let me go onto the stage and bless him, before he dies and his spirit never finds its way," the Tibetan monk said calmly, and the beast of the crowd slammed its maw shut and looked toward their new Emperor. Surely a great man such as he wouldn't let any man, no matter their crimes, wander in this realm for all of eternity?

A couple of seconds passed before Emperor Kiku gave a wordless nod, and the monk stepped up to the stage. Walking up to the man he had taken care of for the past 3 years, the monk kneeled down and reached into his robes for a blessing rope with trembling hands.

"D-do you accept your crimes?" he stuttered, bringing out his blessing rope and waiting for an answer.

"Most of them. A lot of them deserved it. But some didn't. And I regret that." The assassin smiled at the man who had been his caretaker for years, the one who had taken him in, his only friend in the darkest of nights, and the sole visitor of his prisons. "Don't you worry Tshering. This was a long time coming. And I'll be fine."

"You're about to die and you're telling me you'll be fine?!" Tshering hissed, angry at himself or the or the assassin Munkhbat had no idea.

"Well, yes, I suppose so. Oh, and Tshering-"

"And that is enough time for the blessing!" Emperor Kiku ordered impatiently, skin crawling with the internal scream to get this over with. "Guards, lead the holy man away."

The guards extended their long claws in the monks direction, snatching the back collar of his robe and dragging him off the stage, wood scraping his loose sandal like sand paper and the curling sense of blood already embedded in the air sighing through the monk's lungs. Tshering looked at the man he knew for so long, the one with the scarce smile that bloomed in his cheeks, the one that taught him where to put his feet when he was punching underhand, the one that silently helped clean his temple at the end of the day, the one who came to his doorstep a lost man and came out a laughing friend, and so, so many more. He stared at this man, the one he loved, and something in him broke as the condemned man shot one last rare smile, and looked down on the floor bracing for death. A part of him shattered as he saw the axe go up, and then he couldn't hold the jagged pieces any longer.

Tshering wished he could say that he protested with dignity, stopping the execution in its tracks and saving Munkhbat once and for all. But it didn't happen like that. Instead he screamed out, lunging for the man he loved, managing to slip away for a few, scared seconds before the guards sunk their teeth back in a pulled him from the the stage.

"MUNKHBAT!" He try to reach out to him, arm stretching, pushing away the guards and trying to run back into his arms just one more time. _Don't let him die, don't let him die, DON'T LET HIM DIE,_ he screamed in his head, struggling to escape and pounding on the bars of flesh that stood in the way.

"Put him down! The monk is clearly mad!" The Emperor's words were obeyed, and Tshering was shoved down to the floor, boots slashing into his head as he screamed once more. The mass of humans shuffled and looked away from the fiasco, and Tshering kept screaming, kept begging for them to let his lost friend go, kept begging for the condemned to fight, to live.

"IGNORE THE MAD MONK!" Emperor Kiku, that terrible, terrible man, ordered, and the axe rose for the final time. Tshering felt fear trickle down his face as he watched the axe fall, fall, fall in slow motion.

The air was filled with a sickening crunch, and blood of an innocent man dripped onto the crusty sand, along with the heart of a broken man, wailing slashing the air and filling the whispering trees.

And around the stage, bets were paid.


End file.
